The Battle of Arsuf

Crusaders vs. Saracens

The Great Battle of the Great Crusade

Prologue

After Tours the war between Muslims and Christians quieted down somewhat, but it never really ended. Spanish Christians began chipping away at Moorish domains in the Iberian peninsula. Sicily was taken by the Arabs in in the 9th century and was retaken by Norman Christians in 1060. The Byzantines and Turks fought each other on-again, off-again for decades, but neither side ever achieved a breakthrough.

All that changed in 1071 when the Seljuk Turks won a crushing victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert. The Turks swept through Asia Minor and the Holy Land, depriving the Byzantines of their prime sources of men, money, and grain. When Pope Urban II heard of the plight of Christians in the newly conquered lands and realized the danger now posed by the Turks, he called the First Crusade in 1096.

The army of the First Crusade reached the Holy Land in 1098. Despite being abandoned by their Byzantine allies and outnumbered by their Muslim enemies, the Crusaders took Jerusalem one year later. They established the Kingdom of Jerusalem and a number of other Crusader States to protect Christian pilgrims. The Sultans of Egypt and the Turks, however, did not respond to this counter-attack by lying down. War raged nearly continuously between the Crusader states and Muslims.

After the unsuccessful Second Crusade in 1145, (meant to recover outlying Crusader territories lost a few years earlier) a new leader rose among the Saracens. His name was Saladin. When rouge knights began attacking his caravans he reopened war with the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1187 the Army of Jerusalem made a critical mistake and pursued Saladin too deep into the desert. The exhausted and thirsty crusaders were decimated at the Battle of Hattin. With the bulk of the Christian armies in the Holy Land destroyed, Saladin quickly seized numerous critical cites in the region and pushed the Crusader states to the edge of extinction.

In response, a Third Crusade was called. The army raised was one for the ages: it was composed of the three kings of the three great powers of Christendom and their forces. Frederick I of Germany, Phillip II of France, and Richard the Lionhearted of England all lead forces to fight the Saracens.

However, things soon began to go wrong for the Crusaders. Frederick captured the city of Iconium, capital of the Turks, but he drowned soon afterwards and his leaderless army was picked apart by Turkish horse archers. The unsupported French army did little after landing at the port of Tyre. Richard was delayed, he stopped at Sicily to free his imprisoned sister and was delayed further by uncooperative officials in Cyprus. After the Cypriots reneged on an agreement with Richard, he conquered the island. The great Western counter-punch was disintegrating.

When Richard finally landed in the Holy Land the situation began to improve for the Crusaders. The armies were united under Richard's banner and laid siege to the port of Acre. The port fell in mid-July 1191, giving the Christians a base in the Levant. However, Richard, Phillip, and Duke Leopold of Austria (Frederick's successor) fell victim to political in-fighting. Leopold took his entire army back to Germany. Phillip claimed sickness and returned to France, although he did leave his men and some money to pay them with. Richard would now have to fight Saladin alone.

In September 1191, the Anglo/French Crusader army began marching south along the coast of Israel. Richard aimed to capture to port of Jaffa and use it as a staging area for his drive on Jerusalem. Saladin and his army shadowed the Crusaders, looking for any opportunity to destroy Richard. Richard kept his army in tight defensive formations to deny Saladin any opening. The two armies kept marching, watching and waiting.

Finally, as Richard neared Jaffa, Saladin made his move at Arsuf. He had to destroy the Crusaders before they could build a power base in Israel. Richard had looked to avoid a pitched battle, which was considered to be too risky by Medieval tacticians, but now he had no choice. The fate of the Holy Land now hung in the balance

The Armies

Crusaders- The army of the Crusaders was composed of English and French knights, along with supporting spearmen and archers. Richard had also recruited the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar, elite warrior-monks who had been fighting the Saracens for decades. The medieval knight dominated the battlefield in the 12th Century, and for good reason. They sons of nobles, trained from birth to fight and equipped with the best weapons and armor in the western world. A full charge of mounted knights could defeat even the toughest infantry.

In addition to his western knights, Richard had recruited the Turkoples. These were local Christians who were excellent horse archers and gave Richard a balance of heavy and light cavalry.

Infantry was of secondary importance to the cavalry. Most foot soldiers were peasants and lacked the training and equipment of knights. Historians have estimated the size of Richard's force to be between 12,000 and 20,000 men. Richard would need every last one of them if he had any hope of retaking Jerusalem.

Saracens- Saladin's army was the antithesis of Richard's. The Saracen army was composed of light infantry and light cavalry. The Muslims were faster and more maneuverable, but lacked the durability to survive a head-on confrontation with heavily armed Crusaders. Saracen tactics were to exhaust and demoralize their enemies with hit-and-run cavalry attacks, then swarm in and massacre anyone left.

Saladin's army was probably composed of between 20,000 and 30,000 men. It was an army that destroyed the Kingdom of Jerusalem at Hattin and wreaked havoc across the Holy Land. Saladin and his Arabs were determined to drive the Crusaders into the sea or die trying.

The Battle

On September 7th, Saladin began harassing the Knights Hospitaller at the rear of Richard's column. He hoped to pick the Crusaders apart with archers, then finish them with a cavalry attack. The heavily armored Hospitallers lost few men to the arrows, but they lost many horses. The Hospitallers sent numerous requests to Richard for a charge before they lost too many horses. Richard repeatedly denied them their request, as he realized the last thing he needed was for Saladin to isolate and destroy a part of his army. The arrows continued to rain down.

Finally, the Hospitallers could hold themselves back no longer. They charged and drove back the Saracen archers. They also became separated from the main army. Richard had hoped to avoid this scenario, but when he saw the Saracens moving to surround the errant knights he had no choice but to launch a general cavalry attack. The English and French knights and infantry flanked the flankers and routed the Saracen army. Richard chased the Saladin's army for short distance, but soon stopped the pursuit and reorganized his forces. He was afraid Saladin would be able to ambush and destroy his troops if he let them become too scattered. The Battle of Arsuf was over. The final casualty figures were 700 Crusaders to 6,700 Saracens.

Aftermath- Richard took Jaffa soon afterwards. However, Saladin switched to a strategy of scorched earth and hit-and-run, which kept Richard from ever being able to retake Jerusalem. Richard's army was too small to protect it's supply lines inland and attack Jerusalem simultaneously. After a year of stalemate, Richard and Saladin signed a truce that left Saladin in charge of Jerusalem but allowed Christian pilgrims access to the city. Richard also retained control of Cyprus, Acre, Jaffa, and the other cities his Crusaders had taken. He gave these territories to a revitalized Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The results of the Third Crusade were not what the Christian powers had hoped for, but they were still very good. Although the revitalized Crusader states would still be destroyed a century later,(Acre was the last city to fall, in 1291) the extra decades the Muslims had to spend fighting in Israel were of incalculable value to the west. By A.D.1300 Western civilization began showing the first signs of a great Renaissance. The Byzantine Empire also used the time to recover, although this only delayed it's fall until 1453.In short, Arsuf ensured that the Third Crusaders would not leave Israel without achieving good results. Those results were centuries of extra time to regroup for Western Civilization. The Christians would need every last one of those years to prepare for the next battle covered in this blog: The Siege of Vienna- Coming next week.